The WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar presents
Cengiz Çandar
Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies and Senior Associate, Swedish Institute of International Affairs
Register in advance: https://bit.ly/3veA6MT.
Turkey’s Mission Impossible, War and Peace with the Kurds is a work of excavation of the modern history of Turkey, with the Kurdish question at its center, unearthed and exposed in Cengiz Çandar’s captivating narrative.
The founding of a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor brought with it the denial of the distinct Kurdish identity in its midst, giving birth to an intractable problem that led to intermittent Kurdish revolts and culminated in the enduring insurgency of the PKK. The Kurdish question is perceived as a mortal threat for the survival of Turkey. Çandar weaves a fascinating account of the encounter between Turkey and the Kurds in historical perspective with special emphasis on failed peace processes. Providing a unique historical record of the authoritarian, centralist and ultra-nationalist—rather than Islamist—nature of the Turkish state rooted in the last decades of the Ottoman period and finally manifested in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey,” Çandar challenges stereotyped and conventional views on the Turkey of today and tomorrow.
Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds combines scholarly research with the memoirs of a participant observer, richly revealing the author’s first-hand knowledge of developments acquired over a lifetime devoted to the resolution of perhaps the most complex problem of the Middle East.
Co-sponsors: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Contact: Liz Flanagan